


Coffee Talks

by Tht0neGal666



Series: Janet Drakes Guide To Success [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Characters and relationships to be added, Coffee, Fluff, Gen, Jack & Janet Drake's A+ Parenting, Janet Drake Scares Me, Letters, Like, Pre-Robin Tim Drake, Short Chapters, Tim Drake-centric, and mostly Janet's, except it kind of actually is, mother knows best, on an instinctual level, rawr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-08 11:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15929141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tht0neGal666/pseuds/Tht0neGal666
Summary: #41. Caffeine impairs one's will, Timothy, and leaves them open to suggestion. Be aware of this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! I know people have been asking when the other fic in this series is gonna update, so I guessed I might as well say it here. This whole series is kinda a Vent Project, so updates will be spontaneous and possibly far apart, sorry! But! I have lots and lots of ideas for this series, so stay tuned!
> 
> For now, I'm not exactly in the right mood for all of the angst that's gonna come with the next few chapters of TNTBN, so, take this I guess?

When Tim was very young, it was just something that happened.

 

Whenever Mother wanted something, she would hand Father a cup of perfectly brewed coffee. Then, as he drank it, she would make her request.

 

'Jack, dear, Would you read over this proposal again? I fear you approved it by accident.' 

'Darling, I don't much like the new maid, can we fire her?'

'Could we hire a gardener, love? Timothy isn't quite old enough to care for my flowers while we are out.'

'Cynamome, There's this circus in town, I'd love to take Timothy.'

 

And always, always, Jack would agree with her before he finished his cup of coffee. And always, always, Janet would give an approving smile while her eyes shined with victory, and she'd shoo the maid and do the dishes from that meal herself. It was just something mom does, to get what she wants.

 

Mother always gets what she wants.


	2. Chapter 2

When he's a little older, he notices it enough to think it odd. 

 

Why coffee, exactly? He knew his father didn't particularly like it. Preferred iced tea, actually. Coffee wasn't something he'd ever seen his father drink coffee, now that he thought about it, except on those mornings where mother almost-smiled and talked the man into something or other. It was almost like magic. 

 

Like his mother casted a spell, or drugged the coffee (honestly he didn't think she was above it, but he liked to think she wouldn't). Like the coffee was some silent code, like Victorian flower code. One sugar if it's an important business mistake he made that she's making him fix, 4 if someone on the staff was planning to kill them so they needed to be fired. Tim wouldn't know. He was never in the kitchen when she made the coffee. It was almost a conspiracy. 

 

It was almost funny, but Tim wasn't quite sure why. All he knew was, now that mother had handed father a cup of coffee and said 'dearest, I miss the good old days. Could you find us a dig? I'm starting to feel cooped up', he'd have plenty of time to think about it.


	3. Chapter 3

When Tim is old enough to make a habit out of shadowing The Batman and Robin to get pictures and excitement and some weird form of companionship, he gets much less sleep then he used to. He felt horridly tired, all the time.

 

This would prove to be a problem, if his grades started to drop, or if the Nanny called his parents because his behavior changed, or if he fell off a building because he was too tired to defy death. Those all sounded highly problematic.

 

Luckily, there was an easy, man-made solution for his problem. He bought a cup of coffee after staying out far too late one night, the sun rising as he made his way home. He paid with loose dollar bills that he carried around in his shoes just in case, and even tipped the barista the loose change. He didn't like carrying coins (too noisy ), and she looked almost as tired as he felt. 

 

Plus, he had just ordered a double expresso, and she didn't even ask how old he was or where his parents were, which was nice. It was annoying when that happened at places, because it meant he couldn't go there anymore. Didn't want to draw attention. 

 

On his way back, he swore he saw Catwoman watching him. Apparently, he Really Needed this coffee. Hallucinations were never a good sign.

 

Mother had began sending letters home, and that was something she hammered in. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to disobey Mother. She knew everything.

 

Tim went home and was finished with his coffee by the time he got to his neighborhood. he stashed the Camera and belt-bag and goggles in a bush in the shrubbery with 'No Trespassing' signs nailed on every side of the mini-park. He was used to coming home late sometimes, and had long since memorized the movements of the single camera watching the area. He wasn't Dumb.

 

Then Tim started to walk. he forced himself to unwind, slumped his shoulders, smiled peacefully to himself. By the time he got home, the Nanny was making breakfast. She, too, had grown used to Tim's occasional morning walks, and didn't bat an eye as he entered the kitchen, yawn less authentic then he thought it would be.

 

Huh. He felt great, actually. This coffee stuff was great. He was glad it worked.


	4. Chapter 4

When Tim was only five days past his first cup of coffee, he got his weekly note from Mother.

This wasn't anything out of the ordinary, nowadays. His father occasionally doodled something they had dug up and wrote a nice note talking about what they were doing. Maybe an apology for extending their trip again. Mother, however, was much more practical. She didn't bother with niceties. She wrote tidbits of advice on the letters. These tidbits said a lot more then intended, sometimes. Or, more likely, exactly what was intended, just in an unconventional way. There was almost a code to the letters.

If she was pleased with (proud of) him for something or other, it would be something that sounded almost like a joke. (While light swearing has proven, objectively, to engage the crowd more, it is simply plebeian. We have better methods, Timothy, then something so primary, and will damn well use them.)

If she was annoyed with something someone else (usually Father) did, she'd add a bit at the end demeaning the action. (Arrogance is, just like so many others, just an eloquent word for idiocy, Timothy.) 

If she was bored or deemed him a bit too carefree, she would issue a challenge. In her own way. (‘Everyone has their ticks, Timothy, but Pen Flipping is distracting, needlessly complicated, and puts you at risk of drawing unwanted attention. I don’t want to catch you doing it, and I don’t want to hear about you doing it.') 

And so on and so forth.

Sometimes though, she'd use the letters to put him firmly in his place. Didn't want him getting arrogant. 'Arrogance was a fancy word for Idiocy.' a voice in the back of his head hissed in reminder and, well. Looking at this weeks letter. That voice wasn't really wrong.

_**'Caffeine impairs one's will, Timothy, and leaves them open to suggestion. Be aware of this.'** _

Tim opened the letter in the confines of his own room after school, as he always did. He bit his lip, because he was in the privacy of his own room, so he didn't need to suppress 'tells' and 'ticks' like that. It was a compromise written in one of Mother's kinder (by her measure) letters, reminding him that it isn't worth the effort exhausted to be on guard in an environment you are relatively sure is safe. It wasted energy that one may very well need the next time they weren't in a safe environment. One of the letters where Mother reminded him to be human. (he would never voice it, never ask, but he suspected these letters came after some sort of meltdown his mother would have. He was fairly sure she was human as well. Fairly.) 

He was rambling. That was fair though, right? It was always exciting to get a letter from Mother. and he wasn't even rambling out loud even though, alone in his room, he was allowed too. He read the note over and over, again and again until he had it memorized, like all the others. Then he placed all of the letters in a hollowed out book that Mother got him for his fifth birthday, like all the others. And, finally, Letter secure and knowledge imprinted, he let himself laugh at the message itself.

That was definitely a call-out. He could hear his Mother's voice, dryer then the Atacama, relaying the fact with a perfectly raised eyebrow and distinctly unimpressed eyes that, if he stared long enough, would flicker with the barest hint of amusement. He could picture her saying it, casually sipping coffee as if daring him to test the information. 

He sighed, because it was a caution as much as it was a call-out and a private joke. His eyes flickered to the TV, where Robert Leaver was power-walking somewhere, fear glinting in his eyes as he warned about a massive Arkham breakout.

Well, Tim conceeded, he didn't particarly want any part in that. He tended to avoid the streets when something on this scale happened. He was bound to get caught. 

Besides. He needed some sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

When Tim is old enough to be allowed in the kitchen by himself, the first thing he does is learn to make Coffee with Mother.

 

Mother had woken him up one day (Home on time, as she always was), and he was thankful that he was smart enough to never go out for the three days leading up to his parent's return At Least. It does him no favors to be caught Red Handed going out at night, though he's pretty sure Mother already knows. As it is, they can plead the fifth and move on.

 

Mother insists that he must learn to Properly Brew Coffee. Informs him that she doesn't approve of him wasting his allowance on third-rate Coffee Shops (how she knows where he gets coffee is a mystery- he always pays cash, there isn't really a paper trail there- but who is he to question Mother?), so he will learn to make it himself.

 

Mother clearly knows what she's doing. She explains that Black Coffee just wakes you up, and it does it fast, so it more then makes up for the taste. She is resolute in the conclusion that, functionally, it is the best for of coffee. 

 

Tim almost giggles as Mother pulls a tea cup from her personal tea set- the ceramic tea set with pitch black ocean imagery layered over the basic dark red coloring. It's the only cup he's ever seen her drink out of. He had always assumed it was Tea, like Father's usually was, in his golden-dragon tea cup. 

 

However, Tim remembers that this is a learning moment, not one for laughter. He's being taught how to make coffee, and is to pay attention and learn how to make coffee, or maybe his mother will stop trying to teach him things like this. She leaves him alone enough as it is. What if he upsets her so much she stops sending letters? Tim doesn't giggle. Doesn't even bite his lip or clear his throat. He just moves on.

 

The tricky part of brewing coffee for other people is you don't ever know what they want just by knowing them. 

 

Mother intones that if you dislike a person and are in need of petty but small revenge, simply give them black coffee. Most people dislike it, but it is common practice for one to brew coffee for others the same way one brew it for themselves, thus, as long as you are drinking black coffee, it's a solid excuse to fall back on. Plus, it's amusing, to drink black coffee in front of someone who dislikes it. Sometimes, they'll try to play it off and drink the coffee they clearly hate as well. 'Out of spite and stupidity', she claimed.

 

It seemed mother was in a good mood then. If her sudden eagerness to teach him coffee brewing wasn't a give away. 

 

Mother moves on as if the vindictive-advice was nothing, as if the corners of her mouth hadn't curled up slightly at the thought in a mockery of a grin for a moment. She states that Sugar tends to be a safe plan. It's reasonable to assume that someone would want a bit of sugar in their coffee, as it's how most people take theirs. Moreover, Sugar wakes people up in all the wrong ways. It gets them excitable and fast moving, a sugar rush some may dub it. Sugar perfectly furthers the goal of using Coffee to get answers and agreements from people.

 

The lesson continues until Father comes down stairs, and Mother smirks as she asks Tim to brew his father some coffee. She has something to ask him. Lesson time over, Tim lets free the quiet giggle he's been repressing and bobs his head, grin matching hers.

 

(Apparently, mother wants a new coffee maker.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like mother, like son

When Tim had been making his own coffee for months, alone in the house his parents left behind shortly after his mother's brewing lesson, he would claim that he was pretty good at it. His parents had left behind a new coffee maker, and Tim was eager to try it out. 

His mother didn't leave him with a recipe or anything for her 'Magic Coffee' (as he dubbed it) that always got Father listening. Tim wouldn't have wanted her to. It was kind of like a puzzle, trying to figure out exactly how much of what needed to be used when and so on and so forth to make 'good coffee'.

He developed his own concoction of coffee and tried it out on the Nanny. He got her to sign a field-trip permission slip that she normally would have insisted he send to his parents first, so that was nice. If he sent it to his parents, he never got it back in time for the field trip. That was nice. 

So, when Mother comes home exactly when she said was scheduled to and Father is still half way across the world for a dig, he's eager to show her, but has absolutely no clue how to bring it up naturally. Or in a way that would make her care, for that matter. Luckily, the opportunity presented itself when she invited Mr.Cooper, a member of the Drake Industries Board of Directors, over for breakfast. 

Either Tim hadn't done as well a job as he thought he had at hiding his excitement, or his mother had simply expected him to practice while she was gone. Either way, Mother requested he was present for the breakfast with Mr.Cooper the night before, so he was up at 5:15 A.M on the dot, watching the maid set the table and reading a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry while he waited for his mother to come down.

Mother descended the stairs in a modest dress that looked comfortable, and one could believe she had worn it to bed were it not for the lack of wrinkles. Her hair was in a firm bun on the back of her head, and natural make-up subtly rested on her face. She gave him a critical once over, a perfectly manicured finger laying over her lips as she decided whether his outfit was fitting for the semi-casual event. Tim had dressed in a carmine button up shirt and dark jeans, and she didn't seem to take any issue with that, which he inwardly preened at. Something that could have been read as pride or amusement lit in her eyes when she caught sight of the concealer covering the bags under his eyes, but she said nothing, so it must have looked fine. She looked to his hair and tutted, and he barely kept himself from shrinking at the sound. He'd simply be scolded for such.

"Timothy, dear, did you even brush your hair?" She asked, disapproval marring her face. She glanced at the Time and sighed, pulling a comb from the drawer of the credenza Tim had sat by while he read. Tim froze a moment as he went over the morning in his head and slowly shook his head, giving an annoyed frown at the fact he'd looked over such a thing. His mother gave a dissapointed sigh, and waved for him to stand and turn around, face cold. 

He didn't even bother to place his bookmark as he stood and turned robotically, He ended up closing his eyes, focusing on the methodical tugs of the comb. He took the moment to appreciate the contact with his mother, however indirect. Despite the slight pain that came with brushing knots out, it was surprisingly nice.

Mother finished with a hum and tapped the top of his head to signal she was done, dropping the comb back into the credenza and turning from him, never even saying good morning. Not that Tim cared. She didn't have to. It wasn't as if she didn't interact with him, he wasn't being ignored. Tim was fine.

Ten minutes later, the bell rang for the man who was three minutes late. Breakfast passed without incident, pleasant small talk persisting through it. He was included fairly often, asked about his grades and extracurriculars ('I've picked up bird watching recently' he claimed, and refused to see his Mother's reaction) and what he had been reading or watching recently. Nothing really of note. Honestly, the boy was kinda bored by the end of it. He couldn't quite remember why he had been exited for it before, and he'd be lying if he claimed he hadn't rushed through the meal as much as he could without seeming impolite.

He excused himself and gathered his dishes, the maid no where to be seen. Mother had sent her off. Just as he reached the door of the kitchen, his mother called from behind him,

"Timothy, would you brew Mr.Cooper and I some coffee?" She requested, and the underlying challenge in her voice invigorated him, reminding him why he was looking forward to the meal the night before. 

"Of course, Mother!" He chimed, perhaps a bit overzealous. He sent an apologetic glace to his mother for the tone, but she just winked at him before continuing her conversation, not missing a beat. Tim felt a bit giddy at the unusually-cheeky gesture from Mother.

Soon, he bounded back in, Mother's favorite glass filled with Decaffeinated Tea and Mr.Cooper's plain white mug filled with Tim's devised Coffee Concoction. His mother's eyes shined with approval as she sipped the tea and cleared her throat.

"Thank you, Timothy. Now, if you would leave Mr.Cooper and I. We have some business to discuss." She dismissed with a wave of her hand, but she was smirking, an inside joke between herself and Tim, and Tim nodded and scampered off, rather proud of himself.


	7. Chapter 7

When Tim is old enough to be thrown on the streets by his Hero in the name of Justice, he has a bit of a coffee addiction. 

This doesn't concern Bruce, because the man doesn't care much for Timothy. If anything, the Coffee addiction served in Bruce's favor. The more hours Tim stayed up, the more he could dedicate himself to the mission.

Now, if it were anyone else besides The Batman, Tim wouldn't touch a pot of coffee around him. Coffee had become synonymous with talking to himself and fidgeting and walking in circles, since that note from his mother. Something you only did in trusted company, because it was something that could be held against you or exploited by others. 

Tim drinking Coffee in the bat-cave, especially as often as he did, was a silent gesture of trust. Tim trusted Bruce. Robin trusted Batman. It's how it had to work. 

Tim just kind of...assumed that Bruce got it. He was the world's greatest detective, after all. Surely he'd understand the significance of Tim drinking coffee, even while talking to him. Tim smiled the first time he caught Bruce drinking coffee, sitting at the Batcomputer, about half a month after Tim started working for him. 

He marked letting Alfred get his coffee as the largest show of trust ever. He was a little surprised that no one ever commented on it, but brushed it off. Bruce probably just expected this level of trust. If Tim went out every night and risked his life fighting crime, then it was to be expected he'd let Alfred make coffee for him.

It...It didn't quite sit right with him. It was two different kinds of trust, he felt. There was a difference between trusting someone with your life and trusting someone with your coffee. Of the two, he felt the later meant a lot more. You could trust enemies with your life under the right circumstances. However, even if they were saving the world together, fighting alongside each other against a common threat, Tim wouldn't let Harley Quinn make his coffee after the fight. That made sense, right? Tim thought it did.

Well, whatever. It was Batman. Batman worked in weird ways. Maybe he did do something to thank Tim, and Tim just missed it. Maybe Bruce just didn't see the difference between the two. Maybe batman didn't see the significance, because everyone trusted Batman with everything.

It didn't really matter. It's not like Tim would say anything about it. Who was he to question Batman?


End file.
